Patients flee, drawing attention to quarantine dilemma

A report in Nature Medicine this week

This past December, not too long before the Christmas holiday, 49 people being held in a facility near Port Elizabeth, South Africa cut through a perimeter fence and escaped. These people weren't criminals locked away in a prison; they were patients at the Jose Pearson Hospital diagnosed with highly infectious, drug-resistant tuberculosis.
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The use of mandatory isolation to keep disease such as tuberculosis in check is a centuries-old practice. Isolating people with confirmed or suspected infection has helped protect the public from diseases such as smallpox and, more recently, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). A newly published review of 51 studies has found that physical barriers work better than drugs at preventing the spread of respiratory viruses

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